In his new paper Nicola Campomenosi addresses the issues related to the release of the residual pressure in the inclusion due to exposure to the external pressure after polishing of the thin section. He illustrates with a careful set of experiments the evolution of the release of strain in the inclusion upon progressive polishing. Nicola also couples the results from his Raman experiments with numerical models to simulate the strain release at various step of exposure of the inclusion also accounting for the anisotropy of the inclusion and its orientation with respect to the polishing surface. Thank you nicola this is a really nice piece of science! We now know that the Raman spectrum of partially exposed inclusions cannot be used as a reference standard spectrum to calibrate the zero strain conditions! We also have learned that inclusions close to the external surface of the host should be avoided!

But don’t panic, if you really cannot discard that inclusion really close to the external surface of the host… reliable corrections can be made with ad-hoc numerical models for your inclusion-host system!!

Full manuscript is available in open access form at American Mineralogist website